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Prof thinks ICE raids unjust

A University of Georgia professor is relieved the federal government has declared a moratorium on workplace raids that rounded up illegal immigrants by the dozens.

The raids constituted a "grave social injustice" comparable to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the government's blind eye to lynchings during the days of Jim Crow laws, said Larry Nackerud, who teaches at UGA's School of Social Work.

"They are a failure on the part of the federal government to reasonably form immigration policy," Nackerud said. "Raids have frightened a lot of people and caused tremendous family disruption. It's an ill-advised way to go about responding to the call for public policy focused on immigration."

President Obama has signaled a shift in immigration policy that would rely less on worksite enforcement in favor of cracking down on employers who depend on illegal immigrants.

Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was caught off-guard by the first workplace raid since Obama took office, in which 28 illegal immigrants were arrested at an engine manufacturing plant in Washington state.

With a new secretary at the helm, Homeland Security imposed a "partial moratorium" on workplace raids while all agency operations are reviewed, according to Nackerud.

Large-scale workplace raids were common in the last years of the Bush administration.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 5,173 undocumented immigrants during worksite raids in fiscal-year 2008, according to ICE, an investigative arm of Homeland Security.

In addition, ICE agents made 1,101 arrests in connection with worksite investigations.

Government agents conduct raids to remove people who sneak into the country and drive down wages and take away jobs from citizens during a deepening economic recession, said Phil Kent, spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control.

"We want the workplace raids to continue," Kent said. "They're a way to demagnetize the job magnet" that draws undocumented immigrants across the border.

Illegal immigrants not only compete for scarce jobs, but put a strain on services, Kent said. "Cheap labor is not cheap," he said. "We still have, in parts of Georgia, hospitals and schools that are swamped with illegal immigrants."

Whether in the country legally or not, immigrants are necessary in the United States where, according to Nackerud, there is little "population momentum," or fewer younger citizens to fill future jobs.

"It's been well documented that you need immigration for the economy to function well in the U.S.," he said.

Nackerud and a colleague at UGA recently completed a study that found employers see immigrants as hard-working, reliable employees.

"Employers in all areas say without these folks, we wouldn't have survived as a business," he said.

Nackerud has studied the Southeast Georgia city of Stillmore, which was reduced to a ghost town after an ICE raid in 2006 that targeted trailer parks that housed hundreds of undocumented workers employed at the local poultry plant.

"It created a tremendous economic depression," he said. "I'm not so worried about the arrests of immigrants who have committed criminal offenses or have deportation orders, but I think ICE has got to get better at these things because many apprehended and detained immigrants don't have a criminal background."